Recently, at a workshop I attended there were a few audience members who just were not paying attention and you could tell because of the questions they were asking. For the rest of us it was most annoying and for the speaker is was extremely distracting.

Being in an audience of any kind, requires your skills as listener.  And listening is a difficult skill to master, especially in this day of smartphones, IM chats, text messaging and all the other distractions. Some people can do it well and others… well, it’s hard.

When you run into this type of situation it makes it difficult to concentrate on the topic and pay attention.  Here’s a few main things to remember the next time you are in an audience – whether a meeting, workshop, presentation… take your pick.

1. Turn off your phone and unless being used for notes, shutdown your laptop.

2. Ask your share of questions but, if you have a lot – write them down and talk to the speaker later.

3. Keep things on topic – when you take a question and head out to left field it is very distracting for the speaker, and can annoy other audience members as well. We all came to learn about the topic at hand.

Working together as “speaker and audience” will ensure that everyone benefits from the presentation, which is why you took the time to join in the first place.

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